Poor physical development in young children has been shown to impact readiness for school, behaviour, social development and academic achievement. This research sought to explore levels of physical development in young children in the term that they started school. The Movement Assessment Battery for Children (MABC-2) was used to assess 115…

Autism is often associated with early developmental delays in language and motor skills. However, little is known about the complex dynamic processes that drive the co-development of such early difficulties. The aim of the present study was to model the parallel growth of language and motor skills in a cohort of infants and to explore differences…

The United Kingdom and Ireland have a well-established research base in motor competence (MC) research, ranging from reporting and monitoring levels of MC, developing assessment tools for MC, providing innovative curriculum and intervention design to support learning and development, as well as providing advocacy for particular groups, such as…

We describe the development of an evidence-based motor intervention and an implementation pilot study in ten primary schools, involving 515 children (4-11 years). 'Helping Handwriting SHINE' (HHS) is a novel, school-led, group-based handwriting intervention. Teaching staff delivered HHS and provided feedback through a questionnaire, reporting…

Evidence suggests that children struggle to acquire age-appropriate fundamental movement skills (FMS), despite their importance for facilitating physical activity. This has led to calls for routine school-based screening of children's FMS. However, there is limited research exploring schools' capacity to conduct such assessments. This study…

This article discusses motor-life-skills in a sample (n?=?1083) of 33 months (2.9-year-old) children in Norwegian early childhood education and care institutions (ECEC-institutions) and to compare the findings with the results from a similar British sample. The Early Years Movement Skills Checklist (EYMSC) (Chambers and Sugden 2006) was applied.…

Recently, evidence of poor or atypical motor skills in autism spectrum disorder has led some to argue that motor impairment is a core feature of the condition. The current study uses a longitudinal prospective design to assess the development of motor skills of 20 children at increased risk of developing autism spectrum disorder, who were…

Motor control has long been associated with language skill, in deficits, both acquired and developmental, and in typical development. Most evidence comes from limb praxis however; the link between oral motor control and speech and language has been neglected, despite the fact that most language users talk with their mouths. Oral motor control is…

Describes the use of activity boxes with 43 young children with blindness, deaf-blindness, or severe learning disabilities and visual impairments. Discusses the contribution such boxes make to intellectual development, particularly the development of voluntary hand function from the integration of the primitive grasp-and-release instincts shown by…